


Make Believe

by glacis



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-26
Updated: 2010-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-06 17:13:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glacis/pseuds/glacis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After nearly losing Blair (Dead Drop), Jim makes a subconscious decision. The past is reviewed, the future settled.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make Believe

Make Believe, a Sentinel Guide collaboration by Glacis. Rated NC17 (for language and realistic representation of minor-age character sexuality). No copyright infringement intended to anyone. Takes place directly after Dead Drop. Inspired by Jack Hart's excellent compilation, My First Time.

 

It had taken a couple years of cohabitation and risking their lives for one another in everything from jungle paradises to industrial wastelands, but Blair Sandburg believed that now, finally, Jim Ellison knew and accepted him for who and what he was. His place in Jim's life was secure, or as secure as it would ever be, given the carefully hidden volcanic nature of the man.

How somebody so controlled could go off half cocked so hard and so fast, he'd never know. But Jim never ceased to surprise and intrigue him.

Then he'd gotten stuck in the middle of free fall, with a fucked-up millionaire's daughter and her megalomaniacal, homicidal fruitcake of an estranged husband. He'd called on skills he hadn't used since before he'd started to grow his hair out again -- didn't do to let the frantic people who were counting on him know how close the 'fastest torch on the crew' had come to becoming human flambé when a stray spark had caught in his hair -- and gotten his panties blown up by a suitcase way too full of explosives. They'd made it. He hadn't even peed his jeans. He'd kept his cool, kept his fear under control, and used Jim's reassuring voice for a lifeline for as long as he possibly could.

When they'd pried the doors open and pulled them from the hellhole masquerading as an elevator car that had nearly been their molten coffin, he'd really, really needed to lean on Jim for awhile. Who'd been there to pull him out?

Joel Taggart.

Not that he didn't like Joel. He did. But he'd _needed_ Jim.

That freaked him out pretty badly. So he'd covered, like he always did when too much of the inside started showing to the outside, and he'd been stern with the idiot chick, teased the other Major Crimes cops hanging around the lobby, and did his damnedest not to dive into Jim's arms when the man finally showed up.

He was shaking.

Bright blue eyes in a sweaty face stared down at him. "You okay, Chief?" Jim's voice poured through his ears down into his spine, and stiffened it up a bit. The shaking lessened fractionally. "Your heart rate's off the chart and you're trembling."

Blair gave Jim his very best 'what the fuck do you expect?' look. Jim gave him a half grin. His sentinel was many things. Stupid was not one of them. But he could be misdirected. Blair was a master of misdirection. "It's cool. Just coming down, you know?"

The laser look skipped from his face to his crotch. "Slowly."

He grimaced, forcing it to a cocky grin before it gave him away. "You know what they say about adrenaline, man! And it doesn't get much more pumped than the last half hour." If it worked for fighter pilots, it should work for wayward scholars caught in the middle of bombs and sociopaths. Jim bought it.

"Yeah, it happens." A gruff, friendly hug, much too short, ended all discussion of Blair's boner, and the talk quickly turned to ancient artifacts, stairs and Chinese food versus Thai. Beneath the easy camaraderie, Blair's brain was ticking over, thoughts chasing themselves in endless, ever-tightening circles.

He was in such incredibly deep shit he was never going to see daylight again.

 

Jim'd wanted to kill him. When he'd heard the bomb go off, everything had blanked out. All he had seen was the goddamned smirk on the weaselly face, the triumph in those washed out crazy eyes. All he heard was the harsh rip of breath panting in and out of his own lungs and the echoing silence that was the wake of a bomb blast. No heartbeat, no chatter, no reassuring gurgle of blood flowing through veins. He knew Sandburg was dead. And he knew this son of a bitch had killed him.

Jim didn't know what he'd said. Didn't know why he didn't actually pick the bastard up, break his useless neck, and throw his carcass out the window. Time and space contracted to one focused point with a single purpose : kill.

Then something shifted and the world sped back up again. It took him a second to pinpoint the difference. The shock wave from the explosion had passed and his hearing was back on-line. The blast had been too close to the accelerated heartbeat he'd been monitoring since he'd entered the building, and had temporarily washed over it. Now, it was back, a little less frantic, still strong. Still there. Still alive.

The instinctive part of his brain, the part that clicked in when there was no hope, nothing but death, calmed and receded. He didn't kill the bastard. He arrested him. Threw him bodily at the uniforms there to take him away. Ran down too many flights of stairs to get to the lobby.

Sandburg was standing there. Sheltered by Taggart, a weird juxtaposition to reality. Should have been him. The woman was led away, footsteps clicking loudly on the tile. The ambulance siren whooped too near, jolting him again. His hearing was totally screwed up. He could hear Joel's belly, digestive system wrestling with whatever the man had eaten for lunch. The near silent whining screech of the abused elevator cables, swaying in the shaft, echoing just enough to make his teeth ache. His own lungs, wheezing the slightest bit from over-exertion and stress. Underneath it, Sandburg's heartbeat thrummed. The only real thing in a fucking unreal world.

He forced his feet to move. Slowly, then faster, until he was close, close enough to touch, not touching, just staring at him. Sandburg finished speaking to the stupid bitch who'd helped cause the mess, and turned to smile up at him.

Sight wobbled, like a tunnel at high speed, edges of his vision weaving in and out. Bright blue eyes laughed up at him, fear behind the laughter, tension and fatigue behind the smile. The tunnel firmed and filled out, and Jim could answer the smile. Sandburg said something. He answered. "Let's get out of here, Chief." "Next time, take the stairs." Don't ever scare me like that again.

Words failed him, and action would be inappropriate here, now, with this person. Instincts howled at him, but he pushed them back with a feral mental snarl of his own. Not here. Not now. Not with Sandburg.

No fucking way was he going to lose this. It meant too much.

It meant everything.

 

"Seriously, man, it was from a battle-axe. He was the tribal chief, and I guess they determined disposition of power the old-fashioned way, even twenty four hundred years ago in the Siberian steppes. He was one of several bodies recovered in a dig at a place called Pazyryk, mummified, frozen solid, though who wouldn't be, dead or not, in Siberia? And this one body, he had these incredible tattoos, of griffins, and deer --"

The words flowed over him, interspersed with something about urban myths and ten thousand year old hikers who'd slipped and frozen to death and had their penises stolen by the modern men who'd found the bodies. Or something like that. Jim freely admitted, to himself and to Sandburg if the other man asked, that he could understand everything Blair said, he just didn't often listen. He didn't need to listen. He needed the timbre, the tenor of the voice, the undulations of sound washing over and through him. He'd never realized until his senses went nutso on him just how much he relied on his hearing. Thankfully, it was back on-line, and he hadn't had to actually admit to Sandburg just how jacked up he'd gotten when he thought he'd lost the man.

Oh, shit.

"You okay, Jim? Please don't zone on me. I'd hate to think I bored you into a zone, man."

"Wouldn't be boredom, Chief." Shit, shit, shit. "You done? We ... I have to get back to the station. Don't you have papers to grade or office hours or something?" Please, please, please.

Sandburg was looking at him as if he'd grown another head. The intent eyes sharpened further. "You wanna tell me about it, Jim?"

No. No, no, no. Realizing that he was babbling to himself, Jim clamped his jaw so tightly shut several muscles twitched. Sandburg paled slightly. Jim just shook his head. He couldn't have spoken at that moment under threat of extreme torture.

"Okay, it's okay," Sandburg said softly, still looking at him searchingly. "Tonight." It wasn't a question. "I'll cook?"

Jim nodded. Sandburg opened his mouth. Jim shook his head. For once in his life the kid actually took a hint.

"Catch you later, then."

Jim nodded again. Sandburg shook his head, still looking over his shoulder at Jim as he left the Thai diner. With a life-long student's radar he managed not to run into any other customers or any walls as he left, continuing to look at Jim until he was all the way out on the sidewalk. Finally, he pursed his lips and said softly, "Don't bottle it up, Jim. You know what repressing things does to you." Jim heard every word, of course, like it was screamed in his ear. Then his partner and tormentor finally climbed into his car and drove off.

The muscles in his jaw gradually unclenched. Staring down at the too-sweet cloudy brown fluid that passed for tea, he watched the swirls of liquid slosh against the sides of the glass, and remembered.

Too much.

Only the one.

He had been enough.

Alberto LaVigne was as exotic in Cascade Washington in 1969 as a macaw in the middle of a bunch of sparrows. Bert had been slight, slim, with skin the same color as the rapidly-cooling Thai tea he was staring at. He had big sherry brown eyes and long curly sable brown hair and slender hands and a bright white grin. He read poetry. He sang. The other kids on the football team called him a fairy until Jim slugged one of the more obnoxious ones. Nobody called Jim Ellison a fairy and kept his teeth, and so Bert had a protector. Nobody called Bert a fairy after that, either.

Kids did shit together. Boys discovered that piss wasn't the only thing to come out of the end of their dicks, and got so impressed by the whole thing it became a group activity. How far could he shoot? Who'd win in a competition? Everything was a competition. Nobody ever did anything a faggot would do, like kiss or butt fuck or whatever. But they'd touch each other. And they'd discover things. The first time he had a wet dream, he'd cried. Thought he was sick, thought he was gonna die. Didn't dare tell his dad. Couldn't bring himself to mention it to Bud.

Told Sally, instead.

She'd been great. She'd fed him cookies and lemonade and explained that he was becoming a man, and there were things that happened when boys became men. Then she'd gotten him a library book, and he'd hidden it under his pillow so Stevie wouldn't see. No need to scare his little brother to death. Jim was twelve years old, and he was becoming a man.

After that, he didn't compete quite so often, at least not with that. He did start to look more often, though. In the shower. At the urinals. In the locker room. He looked, and he wondered. The dreams happened more often, and he experimented, out in the woods, hearing stretched out as far as he could get it to make sure nobody caught him. It worked, too, for a long time. He learned all sorts of things about himself. It was all pretty exciting. And lonely. He couldn't tell anybody. Not even Sally.

One thing he didn't realize was that right there at the end, when his skin tensed up and his head spun and his fist clenched and his body spasmed, his hearing didn't work. That's how Bert found out.

He didn't realize Bert was there until another hand joined his on his dick. Scared the crap out of him. He couldn't move, just lay there and panted, staring with eyes that felt like they were popping out of his head. Bert didn't say anything. Just leaned down and licked him.

Fear melted into excitement so great he nearly passed out.

Turned out Bert was a fairy after all. By the end of that afternoon, Jim decided he'd never been more glad of anything in his life. It was a great summer. Bert knew all sorts of interesting things, and Jim learned every one of them and improvised with Bert on just about all of them.

The next fall, Bert moved to Los Angeles with his family. Jim never saw him again, and very seldom thought of him. He'd spent a couple years at military school, but none of the cadets were anything like Bert, and Jim hadn't been interested. Then the army, and while he'd loved his men, would have taken bullets for them, he didn't want to fuck any of them. Or even kiss 'em, for that matter. He'd been reserved but not the least backward when it came to women, and he'd never had the urge to touch a man like that again.

Until now.

The tea splashed over the rim, bathing his fingers in tepid stickiness, jolting him back to the present. He grimaced at the mess and swiped at it with a napkin. No use wanting what he couldn't have and hadn't needed in thirty years. Not now, not here, not with this man. For all his hippie appearance, Blair had always been perfectly happy with women, and even if he wasn't, Jim wasn't going to screw up what they had by instigating a relationship he'd just fuck up anyway.

He always did.

Tossing the napkin on the table, giving up thinking as a bad job, Jim clamped the unwanted thoughts into the dark box at the bottom of his subconscious that he never looked at if he could help it, and went back to work.

 

Blair stared at the clock and wondered if office hours were ever going to end. It was still relatively early in the quarter, and not many students were desperate yet. Besides, Jim had made it plain he didn't want company, so Blair was perforce stuck in his office at an hour when he was usually tagging along behind Jim at the precinct. None of the few lust-struck students who usually came by before they actually needed to beg for help even knew he was there.

He had no pressing papers to grade or compose, no research that couldn't wait, no advisors' meetings; for once in his life, he actually had a couple hours of down time. It happened so seldom he wasn't quite sure what to do with it. Even if he had been able to come up with a project, the unknown problem with his Sentinel was too distracting for him to be able to concentrate on anything else for long.

Something was definitely up with Jim.

He'd been pretty jumpy, himself, when he got out of that damned elevator, but Jim had been spacey. One pat, one short hug, then all business as usual attitude. Belied by the stunned look in his eyes and the fact that he stayed in lockstep three inches away from Blair for the rest of the afternoon. There was a minute there, before he'd been sent off to school like so much unwanted baggage, when he'd thought Jim was gonna follow him in to pee.

Weird.

Maybe it was a territoriality thing? Fear response? Lack of control issue? Unresolved need to reassure that the Guide was in one piece after all? But if that was the reason ... why'd he practically shove Blair out the door of the diner and tell him to go away?

Well, actually, that fed pretty well into both the fear and control issues. He sat there thinking about it for as long as he dared, trying to ignore the pink elephant that was sitting in the corner of his mind, patiently waiting for the peanut of his attention.

When he couldn't ignore it any longer, he caved in.

He was chin-deep in shit with no shovel in sight. He'd come to a radical conclusion when he'd been trapped in that elevator, awaiting certain and gory death. Jim's voice had been his life-line. Jim's concern had been his strength. Jim's belief in him had motivated him to find a way out of the seemingly no-win situation. Jim's fear for him had calmed and centered him, concentrating him on saving himself, oddly enough, not just to save his own life, but to reassure and comfort his sentinel.

Maybe it was a Guide thing. Another unexpected and unexplained manifestation of the definition of Shaman to the Sentinel. There were times ... entire months at a time ... when he _really_ wished Incacha had lived longer. Not just 'cause he'd liked the guy, but because he could really use some guidance himself at times like this.

Not that there were too many times like this. After all, how many times had he realized he was in love with another guy?

Never.

Ever.

Not in his wildest fantasies.

Not in his most secret dreams.

Sex? God, yeah. He was anything but a blushing virgin. Not quite as experienced as Jim assumed with the ladies, but with enough sampling on both sides of the fence to know what he wanted. He'd lusted after any number of men in his short but inventive life. Had crushes. Infatuations. Worshipped heroes. Nearly as many men as women. But love?

He'd fallen in love once. She'd been a target, at first, and he'd stopped himself from taking the gift of her innocence, offered as it had been under his false pretenses. He'd redeemed himself, but destroyed her life, and she'd left, only to come back again and wreak complete havoc in his life. And in Jim's. There was a Maya-sized ache in his heart that was only now fading. But it didn't have anything to do with the Jim-sized ache that was threatening to swamp him.

Twirling a pencil absently between his fingertips, over his knuckles, under his palms, his eyes unfocused. He hadn't a clue what to do about this. If it had just been lust ... that'd be easy. Naomi, for all that the outside world saw her as flakier than pastry crust, had been a fiercely protective mother. She'd made damned sure he knew all about private and public, and who could touch what, and who'd better not. She taught him the parts of his body, used the correct words, and never copped out with a euphemism in her life.

As a result, the only time one of her boyfriends tried to grope him, they'd left so fast he hadn't even had time to pack his telescope. And the only time one of her girlfriends tried to 'make him feel good,' the resulting bitch slap had echoed the length of the county, not fading until they were two time zones away. Or, at least, that was the way it had seemed at the time.

As a result, he'd never had hang-ups about gender, loving the person, not the package. He'd also always had an advocate, a protectress, and a nonjudgmental ear. He grinned, remembering the first time he hadn't availed himself of that ear.

He'd been geeky as a kid, but his chest and underarms grew hair earlier than the other kids in his gym class in eighth grade, his voice deepened, and his penis grew, all good things when he stopped getting any taller while everyone around him was shooting up like weeds. Being the smart one as well as the short one, the jocks decided at an early age that Blair Sandburg, he of the girly name and pretty girl eyes, was the One To Pick On. Usually, Blair could get out of most situations with humor. Once in a while, he got the snot beaten out of him. Occasionally, he fought back, _then_ got the snot beaten out of him.

When he was twelve, all the dirty names and pack animal behavior of the bigger boys took on a different tone. The first time he sucked a cock, he did it to keep from getting his nose broken, halfway home from school late in the day after a speech tournament. There were three of them, egging each other on, ganging up on him.

He took to it like a duck to water.

What they didn't know is that he'd spent four years in a commune, from the time he was five. Naomi had been good about keeping him safe, but he'd been just as good at finding out whatever he could about everyone around him, and he had big ears, big eyes, and was small enough to get all sorts of places without anyone noticing. He'd seen many things, most of which didn't interest him in the least, a few that stuck with him and sparked his ever-active curiosity. That day, he added a weapon to his arsenal to protect himself from getting stomped. He also got himself a gang of protectors.

Jason was the ringleader. He was tall, blond, brown eyed, athletic. The football player, the baseball player, the soccer player, the wrestler. Wherever he led, Matt and Dave followed. When he pinned Blair against the stone wall in the alley behind the dry cleaners, Matt and Dave were all set to jump in and beat him to a pulp.

Instead, Jason unbuttoned his jeans. Looked down into Blair's eyes. "You gonna do it?" God, yeah, he was gonna do it. Had been wanting to do it since the first time he saw Jason in the shower. Not that he'd ever admit it. It was one thing to be called a faggot. It was something altogether different to eagerly proclaim himself one. A strong hand gripped into his shoulder. Blair could practically feel it pushing him down to his knees even know, sixteen years later. Then the first rush of scent. The first taste. The first time someone bigger, more powerful, stronger than he, had trembled at his touch.

It was addictive. All of it.

Dave had been next, then Matt, neither one taking very long, both too excited and new at it to last. The two boys had strutted away, chests out, heads up, while Blair spat into the gravel and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. Jason hadn't moved, just stood there, leaning against the wall, looking at him. Blair had looked back up at him. He still remembered the look on the other boy's face.

Want.

Jason had come back. Without Matt and Dave. Eventually, they'd actually talked. Blair learned how to dribble a basketball without losing it. Jason passed biology. Nobody picked on Blair the rest of the school year. Blair got better and better at sucking. By Spring break, Jason returned the favor. Blair had never been happier in his life.

They moved that summer, and Blair never saw Jason again. He wondered, sometimes, what had happened to the other boy, now man. It was the first time he'd had a protector besides his Mom.

He'd never told her.

Now he had another protector.

And he wanted to suck him with all the fervor of the last sixteen years spent building on that initial experience. Suck him, hold him, kiss him, fuck him, wrap himself around him and never let him go.

The pencil snapped between his fingers.

The sharp sound jerked him back to the present, and he snorted softly, laughing at himself for his fantasies. Jim was straight as an arrow, and had the attention span of a gnat when it came to romance, anyway. Being a Guide to his Sentinel was the most important thing he'd ever done in his life. No way was he gonna fuck it up with fucking.

No matter how much he loved him.

Now, if he could just get Jim to tell him what the hell was bothering him, maybe Blair could get over his distraction and get on with his life.

 

The day lasted forever. Simon had to kick him out. He wanted to go home; he was sick of paperwork. He was nervous about going home; Sandburg with a bee in his bonnet would work at him and work at him until the truth came out. Then the shit would hit the fan, and he'd find himself abandoned again.

Jim stared at the front door to the loft. This was ridiculous. It was his home. Not an Army colonel gone bad and hostile black ops interrogation teams with syringes and brass knuckles. This was Sandburg, for god's sake.

He swallowed. This was Sandburg. For an instant, he almost preferred the hostiles.

He shook his head. Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. He put his key in the door, stared at the knob for a ridiculously long period of time, straightened his back, squared his shoulders and shoved the door open.

The loft smelled great. Lasagna, with pesto sauce instead of tomato, since they'd discovered by accident that the acid in the regular sauce twisted his sense of taste off the map. Mozzarella and provolone, portobello mushrooms, garlic cooked until it was sweet, not sharp. His nose finally let the rest of his senses catch up, and he slowly pushed the door shut, leaning against it.

Courtship ritual or seduction scene. It could count equally well for either.

There was drumming in the background, not the jungle kind, but the Latin kind, and Santana curled over his eardrums. Supernatural was just that, and some of the tension oozed out of him. No candles, since even the plain unscented kind Blair used in his rituals gave him sinusitis, but the windows were open, and the night air smelled good, like sea and sand and leaves and grass all at once. The table was set with gleaming silver and stark white china, garlic bread and salad and beer sweating in the bottle. Sandburg swept around the butcher's block and settled the steaming dish on the table, grinning at Jim, peering through curls that had fallen over his eyes.

"Hungry?"

God. Yes. He may have growled. He didn't know. Sandburg paused, startled, staring at him.

"Jim?"

He closed his eyes, firmly ordered his hands back to his sides from where they'd nearly rebelled and reached out to push those errant curls back. Inhaled, reminded himself that he hadn't eaten since breakfast, and bit his tongue to keep from moaning when he caught a good lungful of Blair-scent along with the cheese and mushrooms and pesto. He'd been sweating. Kitchen was hot. He should strip. He'd be more comfortable. Then Jim could lay him across the table and lick the sweat off him.

The thought brought another bitten-off moan to his mouth. When he forced his eyes open again, he knew he must look a little wild, because Sandburg tossed the oven mitts in the general direction of the kitchen floor and flew to stand in front of him.

Too close.

Smelled so good.

Sounded even better.

Soft voice, deep, demanding, _commanding_. Steady thrum of his heart, slightly accelerated by his worry for Jim. Reassuring rush of blood through his veins, rustle of hair and skin against layers of cotton, displacement of air as his arms moved, hands settling on Jim's biceps, that voice again, wrapping him up and holding him tight.

Pesto was forgotten as hunger of another kind swept over him. Words had never done him a hell of a lot of good, but action, whether considered or not, had always borne him through the tight spots. There wasn't anything tighter than this one.

Flavor exploded across his tongue as he kissed Blair for the first time, vying for the warmth beneath his crushing hands as he wrapped his arms around the sturdy body and held him close. Firm roundness of a buttock, springy energy of curls, enough to keep his hands happy. His entire body was hyper-alert, the way it got when he was under fire, but without the need to kill anyone. Instead, his skin prickled, trying to get closer to Blair's skin, reacting to the tiny hairs along his forearm, now pressed against the back of Jim's neck, and the stubble that was burning Jim's lips.

The heat was incredible. For a guy who was always bitching about being cold, Sandburg was a fucking furnace. Maybe that was why. Maybe Blair was all the time giving up his heat, so he didn't have any for himself. Jim could fix that.

The couch was soft. Blair wasn't. Not really. Lots of angles to go with the curves, a surprising amount of bunched muscle, a compact fire plug of a man. But his mouth was soft. Hungry. Saying something, not that Jim could hear, over the roar of their hearts, pounding together. A solid thigh worked its way between his, pressing up into his erection, and he did growl, then. More of a howl, actually.

Then the world tilted, and Blair wasn't there, and his hands moved, to tangle in more curls. The air from the window was cool on his skin. His jeans were open, and Blair's head was moving, and every nerve ending from the tip of his cock to the heels of his feet to the back of his brain blew wide open. Wet. He could feel individual drops of saliva work from the corners of Blair's mouth down paths of fire along his balls, between his thighs, scorching him. Hotter than hell. Sweeter than heaven.

Jim could feel himself slipping into a zone, overloading on pure sensation, and dialed up his hearing, trying to balance the incredible sensations moving like a liquid acetylene torch over his cock. Wet flesh over wetter flesh, the suck and slide of vacuum sealing and releasing, slurp and slip of tongue over flesh, lips over tongue over wet over hot over sweet over too fucking much.

The world contracted to tiny pinwheels of light, bubbling sounds of throat moving and tongue swiping, sensation of his skin being turned inside out and shaken, hard. The light snapped and sang, and the world jolted. Blair was laying over him, staring down at his face. Kissing and licking his open mouth. Taste kicked in with a vengeance, cheese and black olive and butter and semen and mint and tea and Blair.

Heat was branding his thigh, and he moved his hand without breaking contact with Blair's eyes. Jim's fingers curled around the dripping evidence of just how much Blair had enjoyed sucking him off, and for an instant, he saw profound vulnerability in those shadowed blue eyes. Too naked. Too much visible. For the first time since he was a kid, Jim deliberately dropped every last shield he'd spent a lifetime building, and let Blair see just how damned much Jim needed him.

The shadows disappeared.

Jim moved his hand, fingers seeking, palm pressing firmly, wrist twisting rhythmically, and leaned up to catch Blair's mouth. Matching the exploration of his tongue with the milking motion of his hand, Jim gently, slowly, thoroughly loved him, until Blair was shuddering against him, and the heat diffused, spreading to land in strings of molten lava against his belly.

For a long time, there was silence in the room. Eventually, Sandburg took a deep breath. Before he could say anything, Jim said firmly, "I love you."

Sandburg pushed himself up on one arm and locked his elbow, far enough off Jim's chest to meet his gaze without losing any more bodily contact than necessary to do it. "I don't want to fuck this up. You don't have the greatest track record, and neither do I-"

Jim cut him off with a breath-draining kiss, nearly throwing his back out when Sandburg didn't relax down to meet him. Taking pity on his own straining muscles, he lay back against the arm of the couch and looked seriously up at his Guide.

"Do you love me?" He felt stupid for asking, but it was, really, the only question that mattered. Everything else was ... details.

"Yeah, I do, but I don't see how that's going to solve-"

A finger across those full lips cut Sandburg off this time. Jim shook his head at him. "Future starts now."

Blair kissed the finger softly, then nipped at it, startling a laugh out of Jim. "What are you trying to tell me, oh cryptic one?"

"Past doesn't matter. Just us. Now. We're different together than anything we ever had with anybody else. In all the ways that matter, this is my first time. Is it yours?"

Sandburg stared back down at him, taking it all in. Jim could practically see the gears mesh under that mop of hair, and he did see the moment when the decision was made. The glowing smile Blair gave him reassured him that it was the right one for both of them. "Make believe it's your first time, and I'll make believe it's mine, huh?"

"Sing at me and sleep alone, Chief."

Blair grinned, kissed him soundly, and gestured over his shoulder with his chin. "Now that the future's settled, how about we eat before the lasagna gets stone cold?"

"Too late for that." Jim kissed him back. "Might as well skip dinner and go to bed."

Blair beat him up the stairs.

FIN


End file.
